"We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things." - Articles of Faith 1:13
(Disclaimer: I am not an official spokesman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Eremite, Talk Fahrenheit, because Love's not Time's fool

Drawing upon celestial imagery, first Keats and then Frost elucidate different aspects of a love that Shakespeare once described in Sonnet #116 as the "star to every wandering bark." Keats poem inspired a film, and Frost's poem, a song. Shakespeare's poem, if permitted, may inspire the same kind of love that "is never shaken." Here are the poems, first Keats, then Frost, then the Bard of Avon.

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art —
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors —
No — yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever — or else swoon to death.

O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud --
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.

Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says "I burn."
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.

It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats' Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Light the World

Zion Ball

The Most Exciting New Sport of the 21st Century: First of all, Zion Ball

The Good Report

Welcome to The Good Report, a forum in which to seek, gather and report upon all that is virtuous, lovely, of good report or praiseworthy. The foundational principles of this forum are the love of God and of fellow man. The vision of this blog is to drink into one principle of love and to receive truth, let it come from whence it may.